This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art which may be related to various aspects of the present invention which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Visual effects (VFX) compositing is the process of creating a final composite image from two or more input image sources such as a computer generated image or a live on-set image capture, among others. The term “compositing” comes from the act of composing images from various sources to form a “composite” image. Currently, VFX compositing is an isolated stage in the sequential creation workflow of movies, television programs, video games and the like. Known methods of VFX compositing are unable to take advantage of prior workflow steps such as pre-visualization (pre-viz or simply visualization), capture and review of dailies. Pre-visualization is the process where scenes in a film are rendered beyond the simple descriptions on a script or storyboards. visualization, or pre-vis, spans a very large range, from simply filming of the film's storyboards set, to an oral reading of the script, to fully rendered 3-dimensional imagery that leaves little to the imagination. The process provides a test-bed for working out ideas in a “low-cost” environment. It can also be used as a way to express those ideas less ambiguously to others. Previsualization performs the same role in pre-production that nonlinear offline editing plays in post-production: It's a time to be able to make creative decisions about the show quickly and easily, without a large penalty to pay for changing your mind. It allows the filmmaker to experiment with a number of different options, and see how those changes will affect future scenes, offering a more fluid sense of the whole show to be felt. It can save substantial amounts of time and money during production by eliminating shots that don't work early on in the process, when the least amount of energy has been expended on them. Unfortunately, relevant information from these processes is not collected in a systematic and reusable way to facilitate effective VFX compositing. Moreover, known VFX compositors are forced to work with whatever and however images or data to be composited were recorded at capture without the possibility of providing feedback regarding set conditions and the like. A system and method that is able to improve the VFX compositing process is desirable.